Sweet Cakes By Melissa, the bakery being sued by a lesbian couple who were denied a wedding a cake, has had their gofundme page shut down. The page was started to raise funds to cover the $135,000 that was awarded to the lesbians by an “administrative law judge”. Late Friday night, gofundme shut down the page after $109,000 was raised.
From GoLocalPDX:
Lisa Watson, of Cupcake Jones, started her own campaign to contact GoFundMe and report the campaign as being in violation of their terms of service. Watson’s own post on Facebook stated, “this business has been found GUILTY OF DISCRIMINATION and is being allowed to fundraise to pay their penalty. The gofundme terms of service address hate speech, bigotry, criminal activity, and sexism among other things in their campaign…The amount of money they have raised in a matter of a few hours by thousands of anonymous cowards is disgusting.”
Late on Friday GoFundMe stopped the Sweet Cakes campaign. Via GoFundMe: “After careful review by our team, we have found the “Support Sweet Cakes By Melissa” campaign to be in violation of our Terms and Conditions. The money raised thus far will still be made available for withdrawal. While a different campaign was recently permitted for a pizzeria in Indiana, no laws were violated and the campaign remained live. However, the subjects of the “Support Sweet Cakes By Melissa” campaign have been formally charged by local authorities and found to be in violation of Oregon state law concerning discriminatory acts. Accordingly, the campaign has been disabled.”
UPDATE: The family has set up a new crowd funding page, http://www.samaritanspurse.org/article/christian-couple-faces-135000-fine/.